


the space between stars

by kadaransmuggler



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Friendship, Love, M/M, that's it that's the whole fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 07:12:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14806751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadaransmuggler/pseuds/kadaransmuggler
Summary: David Shepard: snapshots on loving and being loved.





	the space between stars

David Shepard is sixteen the first time he falls in love. It is a thing of romance novels and cliche movies- David has just begun moving up within the ranks of the Tenth Street Reds, and the boy he has fallen in love with is from a rival gang. He is taller, older, prettier, and meaner than David could ever be. Some of the other Reds have told David that he is too soft, that he doesn’t fit in because he can never be as mean as they need him to be. David doesn’t let it bother him, shrugs it off like he shrugs off the rain when the roof leaks over his bed. 

The boy does not love him, though. The boy has been in the gangs for much too long to fall for David (who looks at the stars and sees an adventure, who looks for a way to help instead of to hurt, who is everything the gangs do not need). Instead, the boy is looking for fun, for something to occupy his time when he is bored. Part of David wants to follow him around, like a dog looking for handouts, because David has never loved anyone before, and he loves this boy so much he thinks it might kill him. 

But David will not beg for love, so one night (or morning, he can’t tell how long they’ve been together, because time starts to blur and he knows he could stay here forever) in a dingy, dirty motel room, David tells the boy that it is over. The boy only shrugs and starts to pull his jeans on again, careful of the gun he keeps tucked in the belt. Idly, David wonders if he will see the boy again, on the opposite end of the gun, the barrel pointed at his head or his heart (Finch had taught him to aim for the heart, always, because the chest is a bigger target, but David can’t picture himself holding a gun at somebody in the same way Finch does). 

The boy leaves, and David thinks he might have just broken his own heart. Laying on the motel bed, staring up at the brown water stains on the ceiling, he can’t quite bring himself to regret that decision. He’d rather break his heart a dozen times over than have someone reduce him to pleading for love. He knows enough to know it wouldn’t work anyway. 

The world didn’t end like he thought it might. Instead, life goes on. He does the things he is told to do, and he keeps his head down. Finch tells him he is hopeless, like he always does, but he says it with that faint half-smile that tells him he belongs. Life goes on, and life is good. 

* * *

He is three days away from turning eighteen when he realizes love is never the same. It was supposed to be a regular delivery run, a message from one Red to another Red, but there’d been a mix up somewhere along the way and David had run right into the middle of a gun fight. He gets shot three times before Finch can pull him away, and by the time they reach the hospital David is dazed from blood loss and Finch is nearly hysteric. They take him back for surgery almost immediately, anaesthetic putting him to sleep when the last thing he can see is Finch’s face, pale and scared and smeared with blood.

Finch’s face is the first thing David sees when he wakes up, too. He’s still pale, still scared, and a half hearted attempt has been made to wipe the blood from his face. He brightens when he sees David’s eyes open. Finch squeezes his hand, and David realizes that Finch has probably been holding it for a while. 

“Thought we might have lost you,” he says, and David gives him a weak grin in response. He’d squeeze back, but he can still feel the heavy pull of sleep, weighing him down and pinning him to the mattress. 

“Never,” he mumbles, and then he’s sleeping again. 

Later, he will wonder how he never noticed Finch loved him until he almost died. He knows enough to recognize the way Finch loved him without being in love with him, but warmth blooms in his chest whenever he thinks of him after that. 

* * *

He is still in the hospital when he finds a way out of the gangs. There is a soldier in the waiting room as David shuffles by, and the nurse walking with him gets an emergency call at that moment. She leaves him in the waiting room, apologies spilling from her lips as she rushes away. David tries not to feel exposed by the flimsy cotton gown he’s wearing, especially as the soldier looks over at him. At first, there is only silence stretching between them.

“What happened to you, son?” the soldier asks, and David starts. He looks around, like there might be someone else the soldier is talking to, but they’re the only two people in the waiting room. 

“Oh, uh. Wrong place, wrong time, I guess,” David says, fiddling with the edge of his hospital gown. The soldier gives him the ghost of a smile. 

“I have experience with that myself. You ever thought of joining the Alliance?” the soldier asks, and David is so startled the hem of his gown falls from his fingers. 

“I don’t think the Alliance wants people like me, sir. I don’t know how to fight,” he answers, suddenly bashful. It is why the rest of the Reds kept him away from the front lines of the gang wars, why the Reds preferred him behind a book than a gun. 

“We have training to teach you. You should consider signing up. There’s an Alliance recruitment center a few streets over, maybe you should stop by,” he says, and David gets the feeling that the soldier is sizing him up. 

“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” David says, like he might shrink in on himself at any moment. The soldier smiles at him, and reaches into his shirt pocket to pull out a slip of information. 

“Think it over. My name’s David Anderson- if you give me yours, I’ll leave a recommendation with the officer in charge of the recruitment center,” he says, and David takes the paper with trembling fingers when Anderson offers it to him. 

“Thank you, sir. My name is David Shepard. I’m not sure how long it’ll be before I’m out of here, but I think I might stop by once I get out,” he says, and the soldier smiles at him again with a pleased little nod. The nurse comes around the corner again, still apologizing as she helps David to his feet. Later, Finch will come by, and David will hide the slip of paper in his fist. He knows the Reds won’t like it- knows what’s happened to other members of the gang who’ve tried to leave, but for the first time in his life David thinks he might have a chance to take his fate into his own hands.  

* * *

The doctors ask David what he remembers of Akuze. The answer is always the same: a head turned to the side, eyes shut tight, ghosts hanging heavy over his head as he tells them he remembers nothing. The thresher maw acid has burned his back so severely he can only lay on his stomach. Days turn into weeks and he spends them with his chest propped up on pillows, eyes trained straight ahead to the bright white wall. He tracks the time by the nurses that come in and out of his room, by the times they change his bandages, and by the steady drip of the IV fluid. There are no windows in the hospital room.

It is on the tenth day that Anderson visits. The door opens quietly, like it always does, and David wonders what has prompted the nurse to come by early. But the footsteps are too heavy to belong to the nurse, and seconds later Anderson is in front of him, pulling a chair around so he can sit facing David. 

“They tell me you’re an N7 now,” Anderson says. There is no greeting, and David has never been able to decide if that’s something he loves about the old soldier or something he hates. 

“What’s the point?” David asks, turning his head away and closing his eyes. Anderson reaches out, hesitates, and then runs his fingers through the boy’s hair. Every muscle in his body tenses, pain curling around the base of his spine, and then David relaxes, leaning into the touch. 

“It’ll buy you any position in the fleet,” Anderson says, gently, his fingers still carding through David’s hair. 

“Not a nice desk job, though,” David says, and there is a small smile on his face for the first time since he’d gotten the mission briefing for Akuze. 

“No, probably not,” Anderson agrees, with a soft smile. They lapse into silence, then, with nothing but the soft beeping of the machines in the background. For the first time since they’d found him, David Shepard sleeps without nightmares.

* * *

David Shepard steps onto the Normandy for the first time, and he takes in the ship with the same wonder he has when he takes in the stars. Anderson is standing near the galaxy map, turned halfway away from him, talking to another man in pressed dress blues.

“Anderson!” he calls out, before he can stop himself, and the old soldier turns, his eyes lighting up when he says David. He breaks off the conversation he is having and meets Shepard halfway across the C.I.C., pulling him into a hug. David drops his duffle bag at his feet, wrapping his arms around Anderson. 

It is then that he realizes Anderson is family, and family is home.

* * *

David was the only one who didn’t mind the heat of Therum. Even back on the Normandy, the only relief he feels is because they are finally safe. He’d thought he might watch them die, might die with them, in those last few minutes on the planet.

Liara is a curious thing, thrown into the middle of a culture she knows nothing about. David is curious too, has always wanted to know everything he could, and he’d never known much about the asari before. Liara always seems relieved when he asks questions, and David hopes he is helping her feel like she belongs. 

The first few weeks she takes her meals in the back of the med-bay, nutrient bars she’d grabbed when she thought nobody was looking. The first meal she eats in the mess hall, she eats alone with David. It is later than usual, well into the night cycle, and David had been talking with her for hours. He wanted to know everything about the asari, and tonight he had been asking about Thessia. “You should eat with me more often,” David says, and Liara blushes purple, but she is in the mess hall more and more often for her meals, always with David, always together. 

After Feros, they both have trouble sleeping. They dance around each other’s demons, instead sitting at their favorite table, with coffee and tea and datapads. They talk, and most of their conversations they forget, but neither of them would trade their time together for anything else. 

After Noveria, Liara finds she can only sleep in David’s bed, curled around him. The mattress is lumpy and uncomfortable, but the sleeper pods make her feel like she is suffocating, and David makes her feel warm. David wonders if this is what having a sister is like.

* * *

Liara and Kaidan are at his back when he hears the voice calling out to him. He stops, glancing around. It is a voice he hadn’t ever thought he would hear again, and there, in the mouth of a small alley, David sees him. Finch stands with his hand raised in the air, gesturing to get his attention. He is wearing armor, much like David’s own, and it is jarring to see him out of civilian clothes. There are several new scars spanning the planes of his face, but David lights up when he sees him and makes his way over to him. Liara and Kaidan both hang back, glancing hesitantly at each other, unsure if Shepard would want them to follow.

“I bet you don’t remember me,” Finch says, as soon as David is near enough. David scoffs in response, pulls Finch into a hug made awkward by their armor. 

“As if I could ever forget you,” he says, and then they’re standing an awkward arm’s length away, eyeing each other up. There is something hesitant about both of them, too much time passed between them to go back to the way they were, too many newly jagged edges for them to fit together they way they had before. 

“You look good. Different,” Finch says, and David almost winces. He remembers the last time he’d seen Finch, still in the hospital. The Alliance had shipped him off to basic before he’d gotten a chance for a real goodbye, and his last memory of Finch is his tired eyes and soft smile as he promised David everything would be okay. 

“You, too. I take it the Reds have changed a lot,” he says, and he can feel the weight of their lives in the lump in his throat. Too much distance and too many changes, and neither of them are the people they were before. 

“Yeah. We’ve, uh, expanded. Look, that’s actually almost what I wanted to talk to you about. I need a favor,” Finch says, and there it is. It almost brings David up short, almost knocks the breath out of him. Of course Finch hadn’t found him to catch up. Of course Finch needed something. 

“What do you need? I’d be glad to help an old friend,” he says, with that practiced half-smile that the media had begun to love after Akuze. 

“Another member of the Reds, Curt Weisman, got captured in turian space. I’d like you to negotiate with the guard in Chora’s Den to secure his release,” Finch says, all business. There is little hint of what they’d had before, nothing in his face anymore that reminds David of his oldest friend. 

“Yeah, no problem. I’ll be right back,” David promises. Kaidan and Liara follow him into Chora’s Den. 

* * *

David finds that Reds have indeed changed since he had been a part of them. Anti-alien rhetoric was dangerous enough, but Weisman had been caught poisoning medical supplies. David finds his heart in his throat when he thinks of all the people who might have died, can barely manage to apologize to the guard for his lack of information. He turns on his heel to go find Finch, to demand answers, to howl his hurt across the wards, but Finch walks in as he turns around and he only has to wait. He does not give Finch a chance to explain himself.

“What the fuck, Finch?” he says, before he can stop himself, and he is suddenly seventeen again, anger hot under his skin. 

“What have the aliens ever done for us?” Finch sneers, and Liara flinches behind David. He clenches his fists hard enough to turn his knuckles white, and considers breaking Finch’s jaw. Instead, he unclenches his fists and reaches out to Liara, taking her hand in his and squeezing softly. She steps up to stand next to him, shoulders brushing.

“It doesn’t matter what they’ve done for us or what we’ve done for them. It matters that they’re people, same as us. And people don’t deserve to die because someone decided they didn’t like them,” he says, and he finds that his hands are shaking. Finch tilts his head to the side, like he’s finally seeing David for who he is. There is a long moment of silence stretching between them before Finch speaks again.

“You won’t have any further trouble from the Reds,” he says. David watches him leave as Liara shifts even closer.

* * *

One of David’s favorite things to do is to watch the stars. He has loved them since he was young, when he’d creep up onto abandoned roofs. He likes to sit on the Normandy’s flight deck, nose pressed against the glass. He could spend hours sitting there, and he does when he gets the chance. At some point, someone had set up a bench, with a thin blanket and a cheap pillow. He isn’t sure who it is, doesn’t know who’d noticed him enough and cared enough to make a space just for him, but he buys the whole crew a round of drinks in the next port when he finds it.

Once, he falls asleep like that, on his side, facing the stars. Someone- Joker, probably, with the faltering footsteps- lays a jacket over him. There’s a quiet sound from the back of David’s throat that he’d meant as thanks, but the footsteps keep walking and David starts drifting. 

His dreams, when they come, are confusing but peaceful, and he remembers the Normandy drifting quiet through space, like the ship itself is sleeping in the vastness. 

* * *

It is only in the space of a shared breath that David realizes he loves Kaidan. He loves him differently than he loves Liara, more like the boy he’d loved when he was sixteen, but different still. Kaidan is so close that it almost hurts, and then Joker’s voice crackles over the comms and the spell is broken. Both of them are red-faced as Kaidan steps back, a hand on the back of his neck. Everything in his head is screaming at him to cross the distance and kiss him now, before it is too late.

Instead, he steps out of the airlock and onto the Citadel. 

* * *

David would be lying if he said he wasn’t terrified of Ilos and what it might hold. The last time he had felt like this was the night before Akuze, and he thinks he might die in the space between here and there.

He does not expect the door to slide open, does not expect Kaidan to be standing on the other side. 

“I know battlefield flirting is one thing, and I know the regs are in place to stop, well, this, but the way I see it, fraternization will be pretty low on the list of reasons we’re getting court martialed,” Kaidan begins, awkward and fumbling, and something about it makes David fall in love all over again. He does not let him finish, reaches out before he can, and pulls Kaidan closer. They are as close now as they were before, when they’d been interrupted, but there are no interruptions now as they hover together. 

“Bunk here, tonight. With me,” David says, awkward and unsure. It has been a long time since he has had anyone in his bed, and even longer since he has loved the person he slept with. 

“Yes,” Kaidan says, like the offer is a breath of fresh air, and then they are falling into each other, lips pressed together, hands roaming. David backs them to the bed, falls back on it and brings Kaidan with him. It is a long way to Ilos, and they spend it together in the tangled sheets as the Normandy drifts silently across the backdrop of stars.

* * *

It is the way she looks at him on Illium that has David realizing he is loved in return. Her voice shakes when she tells him how she gave his corpse to Cerberus, and in the trembling of her hands and the tears in her eyes, he can see what that has done to her. There are no words he can offer to take the sting out of his death, so he wraps his arms around her and holds her as tight as he can. By the time they pull back, she has blinked away her tears.

He tells himself he will have to stop underestimating his importance to those around him. 

* * *

Kaidan loves him gently. Part of David has always known this, from the first feather-light touches the night before Ilos to the soft kisses he gives him in passing now. It doesn’t really click though, until one night when David has had a migraine all day. It had already made him sick once, and he lays on his bed, the dim blue glow from the fish tank bordering on painfully bright. His head throbs to the beat of his heart, and David thinks he might welcome a Reaper attack so long as he would die quickly.

The door to his cabin slides open. He cracks his eyes open, but he can’t bring himself to lift his head up to see who it might be. Instead, he sees the stars passing above him. He thinks, maybe, that he shouldn’t like to look up at them, nothing but glass and hull separating him from the void he’d died in. But there’s something peaceful about watching the stars drift past, something soothing about the cold dark between stars. 

“If you’re here to kill me, make it quick. It hurts,” he mumbles. He isn’t sure if he said the words loud enough to be heard, but then he hears a chuckle and feels the bed dip down. 

“Nothing like that,” Kaidan says, voice rough like he’d just woken up. And then he leans over, presses a soft kiss to his lips, and when he pulls back there is something blessedly cold against his forehead, beating the pain back so David can finally relax. 

“You’re a saint,” David groans, and Kaidan laughs, laying down next to him carefully. David reaches up, holding the ice pack in place as he shifts until he’s draped across Kaidan, cheek pressed against his chest. Kaidan’s hand comes up, curling around him. 

“Get some rest. You need it,” he says, voice soft in his ear. David closes his eyes, and the stars drift quietly above them. It is a moment that feels like it could last an eternity. 

* * *

David has never been a fighter. If given the choice, he would have served the Alliance some other way. He would have worked in a lab, maybe, like Specialist Traynor, or behind a desk processing paperwork. But David wasn’t given a choice, not in the Reds and not in the Alliance, and he’s fallen into or stumbled upon every role he’s ever had.

If given the choice now, though, to go back and do it all over again, to get the life he had wanted to have from the time he was old enough to read, David would laugh. A life of research or paperwork would have suited him just fine, of course, but he wouldn’t have met his crew, wouldn’t have loved them or been loved by them. 

Liara asks him, once, if he’d make things different now if he could. He’d just reached out and pulled her against his side in a one-armed hug. 

“I wouldn’t miss this for the world, Little Wing,” he says, and she’d rolled her eyes and punched him on the arm, but there was a look in her eyes that told him she understood what he meant. The people he knew were worth picking up a gun and fighting for, and it was a lesson David had learned all those years ago from a hospital bed.

* * *

Standing at the end of the Normandy’s ramp, his boots firm on the rubble of the London street, his hand curled around Kaidan’s face, an apology in his eyes, David has learned that home isn’t a place. It is the people you love and those who love you. It is a hand, curled in yours in the quiet dark. It is late night conversations about things that don’t matter, and the tired eyes and knowing glances the next morning. It is support, through grief and anger. If you asked, and he was in a good mood (which is rare enough to come by, these days, when the world seems like it might end any moment now) he would tell you that home isn’t a place at all: it is love.

There is a galaxy to save and a home to come back to, so David pulls his rifle off his shoulders and races forward into the dark towards the light of the beam, the staccato bursts of bullets in every direction, the distant sound of the Normandy’s engines. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a pinch-hit, and it was a blast to do. The artist was so easy to work with; I hope my ficlet does the art justice. Thank you for reading, and if you liked it, feel free to leave a comment and I'll do my best to respond. 
> 
> Art Link: https://masseffectbigbang.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/art-by-vonubervald-for-reverse-day/


End file.
